In Cambridge has created the ancient ocean in vitro

Researchers at Cambridge University have revealed details of how the first organisms on Earth could get the metabolism.

The obtained results permit scientists to speculate how primitive cells learned to synthesize organic components-the molecules that form RNA, lipids and amino acids. The conclusions and the experimental data give a new look to the sequence of events that led to the emergence of life. Nearly 4 billion years ago life on Earth began in iron-rich oceans that dominated the planet's surface.

Open question for scholars: when and how did cellular metabolism, the network of chemical reactions needed to obtain nucleic acids, amino acids and lipids – the building blocks of life.

Dr. Marcus Rasler said: "In our reconstructed version of the ancient Archean ocean, the metabolic reactions were particularly sensitive to the presence of ferrous iron that helped catalyze many chemical reactions that we observed.

In the presence of iron and other compounds found in the oceanic sediments, the observed metabolic and chemical reactions, including those that produce some of the essential chemicals of metabolism, for example precursors to the building blocks of proteins or RNA. These results indicate that the basic architecture of the modern metabolic network could arise from chemical and physical constraints that existed on the prebiotic Earth."



Source: nauka24news.ru/